MSA Undergraduate Architecture course

I’m a year one student in Manchester School of Architecture. For the past term, we haven’t been taught anything. Sure, we did learn some stuff, but my colleagues and I feel like we haven’t been actively taught. All the teachings are very vague. We get a project to work on for few weeks and each week we get a brief on the tasks we need to do that week. However we are never taught how to actually do the tasks. When we ask for help or further instructions, the answers we get are “look it up yourself”. We have never been taught how to draw a floor plan, yet they want us to draw it for every project. I’m struggling to draw a “correct” plan that they want. I need to google everything, every bit of information myself. I google what the wall thickness needs to be, how a door should look on a plan. But when I get reviews from my studio tutors, they criticise that my plan isn’t correct (wrong wall thickness, wrong door etc) and never tell me what the correct way is. When I brought this up to our course leaders, they say they are doing this on purpose for “creative freedom”. I don’t think this is right. All the answers and comments I get are vague and confusing. Our group had a problem with our tutor, we brought it up to our course leaders and the answer we got was “use your common sense and ignore your tutor”

I want to ask if this is normal for other architecture courses at other universities too. Are we all expected to figure out and research everything ourselves? What is the point of paying tuition and attending university? I’m so lost and demotivated and stressed out. I’ve lost my passion because I’m struggling to google every time what the properties of certain material is or what the door width should be - and not because it is hard to come up with a clever design resolution.

I’m worried that if I graduate like this, I’ll struggle and be behind others when I go into practice. I don’t want to go into practice not even knowing how to draw a proper floor plan. What can I do?

Reply 1

Pedr0

yes sounds normal to me, you unfortunately do have to do a lot of self learning in architecture. However it is not acceptable for your tutors to just say you are doing something wrong without pointing you in the right direction, next time this comes up try and push them for some concrete and actionable feedback.

Reply 2

Pedr0

(can't edit my reply sorry, but just wanted to add that I empathise with you and I do think it sucks that sometimes tutors seem to be deliberately withholding information, been through 5 years of architecture school myself and it doesn't really change much - you just learn where to look for the info you need)

Reply 3

Chloe.26

Original post by Pedr0

Thank you so much for your reply! I would like to ask - is it normal to not be taught about different materials or how to draw a floor plan? I would like to learn but I don’t know how.

Reply 4

Pedr0

Original post by Chloe.26

Thank you so much for your reply! I would like to ask - is it normal to not be taught about different materials or how to draw a floor plan? I would like to learn but I don’t know how.

We were taught absolute basics (what is a floorplan, what is a section, etc) but not much else - some stuff on material properties in first/second semester lectures (Architectural Technology module). I definitely remember having a rough time in first sem as I came into the course without any prior knowledge or reading lol. YouTube tutorials and books are your best friend for learning stuff, you might have heard of some of these already

Books:
Graphics:
Francis DK Ching - Building Construction Illustrated
Francis DK Ching - Architectural Graphics (Section 4 of this "Multiline Drawings" goes through how to draw floorplans, sections, elevations - bear in mind as it's an American book it uses the frankly bizarre American drawing scale system, but the info is all great)

Construction/technology:
Edward Allen - Architectural Detailing: Form, Constructability, Aesthetics
Metric Handbook (could be put in any of these categories actually. it's an invaluable resource, almost anything you want to know is probably somewhere in this book lol)
Arthur Lyons - Materials for Architects and Builders
Keith Boswell - Exterior Building Enclosures
Edward Allen - How Buildings Work

Theory:
Simon Unwin - Analysing Architecture
Francis DK Ching - Form, Space, Order
Francis DK Ching - Introduction to Architecture
Christopher Alexander et al - A Pattern Language
Stewart Brand - How Buildings Learn

YouTube channels:
Surviving Architecture
Show It Better
Upstairs
LazyArchi (this'll probably come in handy whenever you start learning how to use Rhino)
30x40 design
Archimarathon

Website:
Divisare (great photos, plan drawings, sections etc here for inspiration, you get free membership with an academic email)
Pinterest (same - obviously filter for archi related stuff lol)

Info about dimensions and stuff: you can usually find in Approved Documents (available on gov UK website) idk if you'd need to design to building regs during first year but never hurts to familiarise yourself

(edited 2 months ago)

Reply 5

Chloe.26

Original post by Pedr0

We were taught absolute basics (what is a floorplan, what is a section, etc) but not much else - some stuff on material properties in first/second semester lectures (Architectural Technology module). I definitely remember having a rough time in first sem as I came into the course without any prior knowledge or reading lol. YouTube tutorials and books are your best friend for learning stuff, you might have heard of some of these already

Books:
- Francis DK Ching - Building Construction Illustrated
Francis DK Ching - Form, Space, Order
Architectural Detailing: Form, Constructability, Aesthetics (don't remember the author sorry think it's Edward something or other)
Simon Unwin - Analysing Architecture
Metric Handbook (invaluable resource, almost anything you want to know is probably somewhere in this book lol)

YouTube:
Surviving Architecture
Show It Better
Upstairs
LazyArchi (this'll probably come in handy in second or third year, whenever you start using software more)
30x40 design

Website:
Divisare (great photos, plan drawings, sections etc here for inspiration)
Pinterest (same - obviously filter for archi related stuff lol)

Info about dimensions and stuff: you can usually find in Approved Documents (available on gov UK website) idk if you'd need to design to building regs during first year but never hurts to familiarise yourself

I'm pretty sure there's other books and channels I used but can't immediately recall. I'll edit this if I can think of any more

Thank you so much for this, you are a life saver! Your reply is very comforting and motivating for me.

Reply 6

Pedr0

Original post by Chloe.26

Thank you so much for this, you are a life saver! Your reply is very comforting and motivating for me.

No problem 🙂 I edited my post with some more recommendations, I would start out with Francis DK Ching's Introduction to Architecture and Architectural Graphics books, and Edward Allen's How Buildings Work, as those three should cover pretty much everything you need to know